My life is like that movie “Groundhog Day.”  Yes, it feels like I am living the same day, over and over, until I finally get it right.

Obviously, I haven’t gotten it right yet!

Tonight’s dinner was potato soup.  Finishing off the Easter ham, you see.

Tater peered into the pot as I was stirring it.  He gagged.  He literally GAGGED.

Linus says in a very somber voice, “it’s potato soup.”

Here’s the thing.  Tater loves potatoes.  He loves mashed potatoes.  He has yet to figure out that potatoes can be served more than one way and still be considered edible.  The morning he had to try hashbrowns?  He looked like I had bamboo poised to go underneath his fingernails.

I serve up dinner.  I use little Tupperware divided dishes for the kids (major garage sale score, and those babies are wonderful) to keep the different things from touching.  Also handy since yogurt and applesauce are on high rotation at meal time.

They get soup, crackers, and grapes.  We all sit down to eat.  Tater is praying “please have something I like, please have something I like” as he sits down.  He rejoices at the sight of the crackers.  He then looks at my bowl of soup and shrieks “there’s HAM in it!”

I am tempted to start banging my head on the table, but I don’t.

“You eat Subway.  What kind of Subway do you eat?”

“Ham” he admits reluctantly.

“Yes, ham.  You eat mashed potatoes.  What do you think is in potato soup?”

“Potatoes.”

“Exactly.”

He still didn’t try it.  The baby joyfully scarfed down Tater’s portion as well as his own.

Fifteen minutes after the boys fled the table like it was the scene of a crime, I hear the words I hate.

“I’m hungry!”  I feel my left eyelid start to twitch.

I must say, they are getting more skilled in their manipulation.  Not only do I want them to starve to death, I also want them to die of boredom, since tv time gets severely restricted when food is not tried.

The child who hasn’t drank milk that wasn’t chocolate flavored in two years complained that I didn’t want him to have any calcium when I said no to snacking on cheese (20 minutes after dinner).  Then again, Linus started boycotting milk recently when I insisted he was too big for straw cups and could have his milk in a real cup at the kitchen table.

I am losing my mind.

I have been watching that Food Revolution show.  I made the kids watch the part where he purees the chicken remnants and turns them into nuggets.  Even as I nearly vomited on myself seeing it, my boys said that they would eat the nugget he just made out of that pink goo.

Homemade chicken breast chunks breaded and cooked in the oven?  Oh heck no!

Random chicken bits pureed, chemically altered, and deep fried?  Bring it on, and it better come through the drive thru window!

Heaven help me, this has to end soon.  They’ll crack eventually, right?